Thread: At last, free rental for oxy/acetylene cylinders.

Originally Posted by Grahame Collins

Before being purchased by Westfarmers, I believe Coregas were formerly called Air Liquide (Australia).

I did see something about the buyout of the Australian arm of the welding gas business.

Then there was also Linde gas.

I don't where they disappeared to, maybe BOC ended up with them.

It is getting quite convoluted and just a bit worrisome to see competition disappearing.

Grahame

Its a lovely little Cartel,
Coregas was Linde ,however linde bought boc in Europe or visa versa for about 16 billion pounds ,The problem for the sale was in Australia the regulator such that it is is deemed it anti competitive so linde had to get rid of its Australian arm ,Enter Wesfarmers ,Wesfarmers are the airliquid agents in WA not the other states,They bought Linde and renamed it coregas ,You can still see linde crossed out on many of the cylinders,so in WA wesfarmers is Airliquid, in the rest of Australia Airliquid is Airliquid,boc and linde are now the same company ,Wesfarmers is corgas in every state ,except WA where it is airliquid, ,
Confused,
You should be ,So who are supergas,
Super gas seems to be staffed by ex linde people who got the a*rse the when wesfarmers took over ,this is why despite the bad relationship between most of the big players and their customers Supergas have not been able to capitalize and become the dominant gas supplier in Australia (same people same attitude), They were I think (and this is a bit of a guess) a new zealand company who had a deal with the old Linde now Boc for supply and sneaked in the back door to Australia before the big 3 realized it was too late ,
Star gas is BOC the rebranded arm to take on that pesky supergas(who ironically were supported by linde now BOC in the first place)
Any one remember that American TV show SOAP ,
Well that's the gas industry in Australia ,
And its not going to change any time soon ,
Remember the gas companies are not gas companies they are cylinder rental companies